Just back from a week in Yorkshire. The brief was simple: the missus wanted to be near Whitby, I wanted a sea view, expecting The North to be cold and rainy and miserable, and what better way to spend a cold, rainy and miserable holiday than sitting by the window staring at the sea.

As it turned out, the weather was anything but rainy and miserable, and we got an awesome view of the North Sea down the valley, except for the small potash mine off to one side of said beautiful valley. Not a big deal, all things considered, especially when we drove past and saw that the mine also hosts an underground dark matter research laboratory. A mine housing a dark matter research laboratory is no less of an eyesore than a mine not housing a dark matter research laboratory, but it's much, much cooler, and attitude is everything.

Apart from that, what to say? Whitby is pretty, the Abbey beautiful, the Dracula vibe screaming from the gravestones in the church yard next door (even though a sign in the church says "Dracula was never here"), some of the coastal villages are even prettier, with steep roads and old houses sitting atop each other.

We went to a dinkum fish & chips restaurant (bread and buttermargarine for starters, felt like something of a time warp, in the best kind of way), although I have to say that on the whole, London chippies do better chips than Yorkshire chippies. Can't comment on the fish, but chips I have opinions about.

The moors are also bleakly pretty (Ronwen not as taken, these lacking the 'character' that the tors of Dartmoor provide). We did drive past RAF Fylingdales which has the hugest, craziest radar tower I've ever seen, and adds about as much obscure character as you could want to an already other-worldly landscape. And we took a steam train across the moors, which was over too quickly, but still great fun. Rail transport progress does not always feel like progress.